Reveal rebellious heroes from across time with the power of your voice
An interactive Augmented Reality (AR) story for your phone, Ghosts of Solid Air takes you into a world of radical voices and shadows.
On a journey from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament, you speak and the ghosts speak back, pressing through an invisible membrane with messages for you.
Through an encounter with those who have been pushed beyond their tipping point – this experience asks: where does disobedience come from?
Walk with the ghosts – and decide for yourself.
Trailer
How Do I Do It?
You can experience the beta version of Ghosts of Solid Air using a smartphone, on location in central London. You have to download an app onto your phone from the Google Play Store. Currently, Ghosts of Solid Air is not available for iOS.
As a beta release, the experience might work perfectly for some but crash for the rest – if the latter happens to you, please let us know by emailing us at ghosts@weareanagram.co.uk.
We are also gathering as much feedback as possible from a wide variety of users, and are especially keen to hear from those who are able to test the app’s accessibility functions – do drop us an email if you would like to give it a go.
Thanks from everyone at Anagram and the wider team!
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For those who successfully downloaded the app, here is a simple guide to best experience the beta version of Ghosts of Solid Air:
Once you have the app – you must go to Trafalgar Square with your whole body, not just your imagination.
Check that the locations are free (look at the FAQs), charge your phone, grab your headphones, and walk into the middle of Trafalgar Square – and begin the adventure.
Please note that you will not be able to find any ghosts in the dark – your camera needs to see properly to be able to find things.
So, depending on what time of year it is, do not begin the experience when it is getting dark as you won’t be able to complete it.
Narrative Experience
Ghosts of Solid Air is an interactive story that you explore on location in central London.
Wearing headphones, you open the app on your phone – standing somewhere in Trafalgar Square. You hear two voices, speaking to you in unison, swirling around your head with meticulously crafted sound design. These are the voices at the gate – and they persuade you to speak up. Bit by bit, as you softly murmur into your phone, the ghost world is revealed – a strange world of pink sky, drifting mist and indistinct figures.
As you explore, you meet a host of characters from across time who were radicalised through personal experience and forced into disobedient action.
These characters are based on real people from history.
You meet Olaudah Equiano haunting the statues of Trafalgar Square – enslaved as a child, he became an abolition activist with one of the earliest-known examples of published writing by an African in the UK.
Udham Singh paces around Horse Guards Parade – an Indian revolutionary, he witnessed the Amritsar massacre of 1919 and eventually murdered the British Army general who was responsible.
And Josie McGowan – the first woman to die at the hands of the Dublin Metropolitan Police in 1918 – keeps watch on the police stationed at the back of Downing Street.
As each ghost tells their story, of violent memories, moments of change and reasons to rebel, the voices at the gate keep bringing the story back to you. What makes you angry, and what words can you find to speak that anger out into the world?
You can only stay in the ghost world for so long – and when you finally reach Parliament Square, voices from now occupy the airwaves. What felt like a ghost world rooted in the past has become a sea of voices both past and present, woven together.
As the voices of contemporary activists who have spoken up fill the airwaves on the grass in front of Big Ben – you are invited to consider: what will you hold onto from all these voices – which stories will you tell?
